Not one of our native shrubs is so generally admired as the Mountain
Laurel; no other equals it in glowing and magnificent beauty. But the
“patriots” who plunder the fields of its branches and flowers for
gracing the festivities of the “glorious Fourth” will soon exterminate
this noble plant from our land. There are persons who never behold a
beautiful object, especially if it be a flower or a bird, without
wishing to destroy it for some selfish, devout, or patriotic purpose.
The Mountain Laurel is not so showy as the rhododendron, with its deeper
crimson bloom; but nothing can exceed the minute beauty of its
individual flowers, the neatness of their structure, and the delicacy of
their shades as they pass from rose-color to white on different bushes
in the same group. The flower is monopetalous, expanded to a cup with
ten angles and scalloped edges. “At the circumference of the disk on the
inside,” says Darwin, “are ten depressions or pits, accompanied with
corresponding prominences on the outside. In these depressions the
anthers are found lodged at the time when the flower expands. The
stamens grow from the base of the corolla, and bend outwardly, so as to
lodge the anthers in the cells of the corolla. From this confinement
they liberate themselves, during the period of flowering, and strike
against the sides of the stigma.” This curious internal arrangement of
parts renders the flower very beautiful on close examination. The
flowers are arranged in flat circular clusters at the terminations of
the branches.
We seldom meet anything in the forest more attractive than the groups of
Mountain Laurel, which often cover extensive slopes, generally appearing
on the edge of a wood, and becoming more scarce as they extend into the
interior or wander outwardly from the border. But if we meet with an
opening in the wood where the soil is favorable,—some little sunny dell
or declivity,—another still more beautiful group opens on the sight,
sometimes occupying the whole space. The Mountain Laurel does not
constitute the undergrowth of any family of trees, but avails itself of
the protection of a wood where it can flourish without being
overshadowed by it. In the groups on the outside of the wood, the
flowers are usually of a fine rose-color, fading as they are more
shaded, until in the deep forest we find them, and the buds likewise, of
a pure white. I am not acquainted with another plant that is so
sensitive to the action of light upon the color of its flowers. The
buds, except in the dark shade, before they expand, are of a deeper red
than the flowers, and hardly less beautiful.
The Mountain Laurel delights in wet places, in springy lands on rocky
declivities where there is an accumulation of soil, and in openings
surrounded by woods, where the land is not a bog, but wet enough to
abound in ferns. In such places the Kalmia, with its bright evergreen
leaves, forms elegant masses of shrubbery, even when it is not in
flower. Indeed, its foliage is hardly less conspicuous than its flowers.
I believe the Kalmias are not susceptible of modification by the arts of
the florist. Nature has endowed them with a perfection that cannot be
improved.